


Retro-framing

by feyrelay



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Adult Peter Parker, Age Difference, Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, Character Death Fix, Fade to Black, Five Years Later, Fluff, Getting Together, M/M, POV Tony Stark, Resurrection, Team as Family, Tony Stark Has Issues, Tony has doubts, but not like... in a bad way, conflicted feelings, not super smutty, questioning of morals, relationship angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-23
Updated: 2020-08-23
Packaged: 2021-03-06 17:55:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,077
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26063071
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/feyrelay/pseuds/feyrelay
Summary: In which Tony comes back to an adult Peter, has a crisis about it that he's sure people can see from space (not that he wants to think about space, THANKS), and oh... well, basically he needs everyone they know to sign off on this thing with Peter before he takes another step.Peter, spoiler alert, is prepared to be very patient with him. But not too patient.Original Prompt:When Tony greets Peter, fresh from... wherever he went after being dusted... and calls him his favorite young adult, well. Peter has a little much on his mind at that moment to properly appreciate it. But when the battle is over and Tony is healed from the strain of his own snap and Pepper and Morgan are away for a visit to Morgan’s new step-daddy... Tony gets to show Peter exactly how to be favored, and young, and adult, with the most life-affirming sex either of them can manage.Inspired bythis deleted scene.
Relationships: Minor or Background Relationship(s), Peter Parker/Tony Stark
Comments: 24
Kudos: 165
Collections: Mind The Age Gap Flash Fic Prompt Meme





	Retro-framing

**Author's Note:**

  * In response to a prompt by Anonymous in the [agegapflashficpromptmeme](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/agegapflashficpromptmeme) collection. 



> Sorry this took so long. As always I take a prompt and run in the other direction with it entirely. By the time I got to the end, the 'life-affirming sex' didn't seem to tonally fit, but I'm sure I'll write proper smut based on this at some point.
> 
> Also, here's a [playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5Mehp7fTRaqhMal3RMiy1f?si=qOXCrLd0TeWvwsIuJOTB9w).

Peter is the one who brings back Vision, and Tony’s not even surprised.

 _Okay, he’s a little surprised._ But not because he didn’t think Peter could do it, and not because he thought Peter wouldn’t care. Before the end, he’d known Peter to be the kind of person who never let his eyes slide past even the most unconvincing-looking panhandler. It was part of the reason why Tony had gotten into the habit of personally sending a car for him—for a sixteen-going-on-seventeen-year-old for chrissake—everywhere Peter went that it was the least bit feasible to do so.

(…it was _part_ of the reason.)

But more to the point, the kid doesn’t bring him back so much as he _remakes_ Vision, and it does take him five years. 

However, Tony’s not there to help, on account of being wormfood and all, so when _he_ actually bounces back and Strange clears him, and he runs, jets, warps, phases, breaks the laws of physics to see Morgan and Happy (a package deal coming home from school), and Peter (oh god, _Peter,_ kid, please let go, let me look at you, you got so tall), and Rhodey (always), and Pepper (who is the new Mrs. Something-or-other-not-Stark), in that order… 

He’s a little surprised to see Vision alive and well somewhere in all of that, is what Tony is trying to say.

He’s even more surprised to see that there’s no Mind Stone required.

***

Tony remembers to ask Peter why he took it upon himself to fix Vision, about three months into this whole 'I’m Back, Bitches' thing. He’s very proud of himself for remembering to ask ‘why’ before asking ‘how’, despite how it makes him itch.

Peter looks at him so oddly when he asks, the way he does all the time now. He’s an adult. They both are, allegedly. Peter looks at him the way people look at lights which come back on after the power’s been out for a long time, for hours, when it stops being about _where_ the flashlights or candles are and starts to be about how long they’ll last. It's a devastating look, on Peter in particular.

They’d had a wicked storm once, a nor’easter, when Tony and Rhodey had been at MIT, that had ripped a sizable tree out by the roots and tipped it over into its own crater, almost remorsefully, like the storm was ashamed of the hole it’d made and intended to bridge it with the oak’s huge body. Too bad the branches were tangled in a downed power line.

The pair of them had, like idiots, gone and stood in the puddle in front of the sinking dorm and looked all down the street as transformer after transformer had blown, bursts of green all in a line, burning that color because of the copper wiring. The air had smelled like a bad penny.

Peter looks at him like that, now. Like Tony’s the storm, or maybe the tree, or the puddle, or the pretty green, or the bad penny taste, or the lights coming back on after about eighteen hours. Maybe all of the above, but Peter looks at him like he’s _something,_ something Tony hadn’t been before disaster struck.

“Why wouldn’t I?” Peter says, finally. “Who else would’ve fixed him? Wanda? I couldn’t let her hurt herself like that. And we needed science _and_ magic, not just one or the other.”

“Oh, but it’s okay to hurt yourself?" Tony asks. As if any scenario where Peter does so could be a win. Unacceptable. "I- I wanted you to go on and be free from all this. I never wanted you to be like me. Just because I gave you Edith, that doesn’t mean-”

The kid scrambles up from his chair in the compound kitchen, rebuilt as it is in exactly the way it was before, a collective monument of mourning that posthumously says, to Tony at least: _Tony Stark Had It Right The First Time._ At least he knows where the coffee and booze are still kept.

Peter scrapes back from the table and goes to leave the room in a huff, but then suddenly whirls back around _so fast, too fast,_ and gets right in Tony’s face.

“It’s not like you were there to stop me, sir.”

Tony doesn’t flinch, won’t. But he looks at Peter’s mouth, while Peter is looking at his eyes.

Peter licks his own lips, perhaps subconsciously, and watches him watch.

“Do you think I’d stop you?” Tony asks him. “Now?”

Now Peter is looking at _his_ mouth. “As if you could.”

(Hours later, he remembers he meant to tell Peter ‘good job’.)

***

They kiss, first, in Peter’s apartment, the little two-bedroom one that Tony had bought, before, that had a skylight for Spider-Man to crawl out of. It had a ton of extra soundproofing installed, for Peter’s senses, which meant it had needed new drywall after the installation, and after that… it had needed to be repainted.

Tony had done his damnedest, standing in front of the sea of blue paint chips, to pick colors that Peter would like. He didn’t even know if they’d ever get Peter back, at first, but the New York City real estate market was in shambles post-Snap, and it had _felt_ like helping. It hadn’t _felt_ frivolous, buying and renovating an apartment for a dead person. Pepper had been expecting by then and was doing her own nesting thing with the cabin and Tony had a tendency to, um, _oversteer._ So he hung out in an anonymous little apartment in Queens and tried to hope that one day the place would see use.

Finally, realizing there were more shades of blue than even his formidable imagination had ever dreamed up, Tony had settled on at least picking hues that had fun names that Peter would like, if he was ever alive again to hear them. _Security Blanket. Galactic Galadriel. Icy Innuendo. Canadian Tuxedo. Arc Reactor._

Now, Tony is given the grand tour of what the place looks like with Peter’s things in it; his furniture, his books, his pictures all give Tony little peeks into what’s gone missing between them in the past five years, but _selfishly_ all Tony can think about is the fucking paint job.

Peter shows him the larger bedroom, the one that isn’t a cramped workshop/lab. Tony puts his hand on the wall so that he doesn’t put his hands on Peter. He wants to tell him about the paint. About _Arc Reactor,_ because of course he did.

(This is so fucked up, Tony knows.)

Tony looks up into the brightness of the skylight, the way people do when they’re trying to sneeze. Or not sneeze. He can never remember.

“I really like it here, Mr. Stark,” Peter tells him. “I stayed with May for a long time, because I was still at Midtown and it hurt too much. But then, when my identity came out and I knew I had to go, that it was time… this place was just… waiting for me.”

Tony nods jerkily and doesn’t look at him. Can’t. “You’re welcome.”

"No, you," Peter says, turning it around on him. "You're welcome here any time. I- I know it must be hard to be back in the city. And I know the tower gets lonely."

Tony doesn't ask how Peter knows the tower gets lonely. It makes sense; the tower lab is the only place, outside of Wakanda, with the necessary equipment to rebuild Vision. And Peter is too considerate by half to bring the problem to them, not when that country had sustained so many losses, ultimately fruitlessly, trying to help Vision the first time. 

Tony doesn't tell Peter about the paint, either. Instead, he praises, "You've become so considerate and mature, kid. But I'm alright, really. Don't worry about me; I'm just a silly old man. Enjoy being young and beautiful."

And Peter lights up like Tony's words are actual touches. "Oh. Uh-" 

Tony can't help but pile more on. Each compliment is perfectly sincere, things he's held back for three months and not just lip service, but suddenly he needs to get them all out. He wants to see what Peter will do.

"I'm so proud of you, kid."

The blush. God, the blush.

"M'not a kid,” Peter manages. “But, um, thanks-" 

"You did a good job with Vision. I presume you used Friday's backdoor access? I coded it so she could correspond with his archives, well. Jarvis’s archives. The Jarchives, if you will, I made it so she could get in if I made some kind of reference that she didn't understand yet… a fighting technique, a nickname, a villain."

Peter steps closer in the blue bedroom. His cheeks are a little flushed, still. "Yes! Yes, I found her backups of his architecture for that, and then also consulted Princess Shuri for large parts of it. And of course Dr. Banner was happy to help, and-"

Tony takes his hand off the wall and instead takes Peter's shoulders in his hands, to pull him closer or to hold him away, he doesn't know. "You always call people by their proper titles," Tony interrupts Peter to praise. "Such a good b- good man," he adds firmly. He watches Peter's eyelashes flutter.

He watches even closer as Peter swallows hard. "Mr. _Stark-_ " he tries, with emphasis, and Tony…

He shivers. He knows his hands shake on Peter's shoulders.

"Why are you doing this, sir?" Peter ghosts out, but not like he wants Tony to stop.

"Because I should have done it before." Tony drops his hands and turns away. He goes to glance over Peter's desk, even picks up a stray pencil and starts idly tapping at the different miscellany that Peter's collected there. "I should have told you every day how proud of you I was. I should have made sure everyone knew you were the next me, and that you were practically, almost my son-" 

Peter coughs. He touches Tony's shoulder and Tony is forced to shrug him off and cross to the bookcase.

(Almost my son.)

At least a dozen of the books are unauthorized biographies of his own life. There's one called, rather dramatically, _Candy Apple and Blood Red: What Iron Man and Spider-Man Had in Common, a Story in Supersuits._

They could certainly have edited that one down. How many words does it take someone—an outsider even—to tell their story: I built his suit and he built a little hollow in the bottom of my heart that some days I almost decided to rip right out.

(Almost.)

He should have done it. He should have done it before the kid had fluttered through his fingers, all ash. It would have saved him some pain, maybe.

(Maybe.)

"…and I should have made sure at least Natasha or _someone_ knew you were my weakness. If they'd asked… I would have done it sooner. If they'd come to the cabin wielding your name, then maybe it wouldn't have been five years before I-" 

"She knew," Peter informs him. Tony feels the knowledge impact him, center of his chest, like a torn-out tree. "Daddy issues, non-pathological but very real narcissism, poor group dynamics, possibly emotionally compromised with regard to underaged team member for whom he constitutes an authority figure," Peter quotes, as if he'd read it a thousand times or more, word-for-word.

"It was in her files?" he figures. "She ran that place like it was what SHIELD should have been."

"Yeah."

Tony finally turns around and faces Peter. He has to, for this. "I'm so sorry, Peter. I never… I never meant to make you uncomfortable, if I ever did. It didn't even… It didn't even _really_ start until after the dust. You were just gone, and I couldn't sleep for dreaming about it. I'm so sorry you had to find out like that but I just-"

Peter snorts into the space between them. "It's okay. It was an extremely flattering file to read. Anthony Stark, it said, 6'1" and 185 pounds, which _yeah fucking right, sir, no way_. Brown eyes and black-brown salt-and-pepper hair, date of birth unknown which I still don't even _get-_ "

"It has to do with my dad being himself about the whole thing, don't worry about it, it's still 1970 is the really fucked up part-"

Peter looks up from his twisting hands on the words 'fucked up', and it's so like the kid he used to be—to fixate on Tony cursing even though Peter himself curses with alarming regularity now—that Tony feels the need to continue explaining.

"Look, kid, I never. I never gave you special treatment because I wanted anything from you. I was genuine, I was impressed, I wanted to protect you from Ross and that's it. But after you… After Thanos, when there was no more protecting to be done, I kept thinking I should have done more. That maybe if I were better you'd still be alive."

(Maybe not.)

Peter's inhale in, at that, is shaky and it seems like there's a story there but he doesn't interrupt Tony, for which Tony is grateful. He's only gonna be able to say this once, maybe.

He soldiers on. "When you were alive before, it was never like that for me. You were just an awkward, gangly kid. I would never have- Jesus. But then I reno'd this place and I couldn't help but picture you in it, older, looking like you do now. And I just _wanted_ , I just wanted you back, and I didn't care how. I just wanted to be able to tell you-"

Peter steps toward him. "Tell me now."

"I can't. _Peter_ , I _can't-_ " 

"Please."

"I'm sorry…" 

Which is the wrong thing to say. Those words, apologies, will always be explosive between them, will always burn now. They both inhale quick, anxious about it.

There's a pause and then goosebumps go up his arms at the same moment that Tony sees Peter's jaw tick, and-

"Come on, sir," Peter prompts him again, taking another step forward. He must be as aware as Tony is that there are only books behind him. "We're here now," Peter adds, looking at Tony with those big, brown eyes that are bright, lighter than his own, beacons, "and we could all die tomorrow."

The skylight lets in the light just so, framing Peter, or maybe that's just Tony's brain and how much he _wants._ It's Tony's worst trait: he can't help but make little edits, constantly making people and things and reality itself more than they are. Trying to, anyway.

It's why Peter, the idea of him… it's why it's always made a sick sort of sense to Tony, even though he's steadfastly refused to call it anything but an affinity, a neutral-sounding little preoccupation with the kid. It makes sense because the only 'edits' Peter's ever needed, in Tony's mind, are a spotlight and time.

In the meantime, Peter picks up Tony's clenched fists and fits one each on either side of his own neck, forcing Tony to relax his hands. 

He cups Peter's face, though, and _that's_ not forced. Peter circles his own hands around Tony's wrists, keeping Tony there. "We could all die tomorrow," Tony repeats faintly, sounding out the words of a moment ago, still feeling Peter's jumping jaw and neck under his fingers.

"Yeah. Manipulative of me, I know, but it's technically true. What would you say, Tony, if you thought we only had one day left?"

It's the use of his first name that does it. Tony's heart rate picks up, even as he feels Peter's own pulse rabbiting away under his palms.

Tony just looks at Peter for a long, long time. He notices the high color dusting the kid's cheeks and how he takes far better care of his hair and skin now that he's an adult. Tony thumbs over Peter's face wherever he can reach, and a smile blooms wherever he's been.

It's a crooked, sort of hopeful smile and Tony knows he could break Peter Parker's heart right now. He could maintain the status quo, such as it is, and keep himself safe from any social censure or emotional vulnerability, all in one fell swoop. He could do that.

Or he could just tell him. 

"I wanted to tell you, kid, that you were so loved. Are so loved. By me. I should have told you."

Peter presses him into the bookcase, full-contact, whole-body, no hesitation. He slots their mouths together to kiss, over and over and over. 

Tony, struck by it, finds himself stuck in place. He lets his eyes fall shut because it seems natural to do so, but otherwise he's just content to let Peter's passion flow through him like a current.

Their air mingles, with Peter practically breathing him in, until Tony feels hot all over. Now it's Peter who has Tony's face in _his_ hands, and Tony doesn't know what to do about it besides sink into it and groan.

"Peter, _honey-_ "

"I know, I know, I know, sir. It's okay-"

Tony is galvanized and unfrozen by Peter's words, and he finally kisses Peter back. Peter's mouth is soft and yielding to him and he's able to lick into it all hot and wet. But behind that, too, there is strength, and Peter gives as good as he gets until there are hands in Tony's hair and bookcase shelves putting pressure on his spine and Peter's ass in his hands.

And Tony starts, weirdly, crying a little bit.

Peter reels back, wide-eyed. "Oh God, are you okay? Did I hurt you? Sorry, I just- I've been thinking about this since I-" 

Tony really doesn't want to know how long Peter's been thinking about it. He can barely handle acknowledging how long he _himself_ has been thinking about it. Thus the uncharacteristically damp eyeballs.

If Peter—the same Peter who he _knows_ grew up with a Stark Expo poster taped up in his bedroom—tells him he's been thinking about this kiss since, well. 

He's not gonna handle it with… grace, is what Tony's saying.

"…since I came back through the portal and you greeted me all, 'My favorite young adult!' as if I'd suddenly evolved like a Pokémon despite somehow, really unfairly I might add, not having aged in the afterlife-"

Tony holds up a hand and uses the other hand to wipe his face of the few tears he's managed; it was more like a really aggressive, inconvenient watering of the eyes. Let's go with that.

"Sorry, m'sorry, Peter. I'm just freaking out. Also I really don't know what a Pokémon does, I was drunk most of the nineties and drying out most of the aughts, so-"

Peter doesn't laugh at that the way Tony means him to. He just interrupts. "I love you."

Sure. Because he can totally handle that right now. "No," he says gently, pushing away from the bookcase and sitting down on the end of Peter's queen-sized bed.

"Yes," Peter counteroffers. He comes to sit beside him.

Tony sighs when Peter takes his hand. "Since the battle, really? 'My favorite young adult'?"

Peter laughs through his nose, a short little exhale. "Not your smoothest moment. You introduced me to Pepper in the middle of fire and brimstone raining down, like you needed to drag me into her awareness to keep me safe from yourself. So awkward. So perfect." He squeezes Tony's hand when Tony closes his eyelids over hot eyes, in embarrassment.

"I made you uncomfortable. And then died on you. I'm so sorry. Fuck."

"No, the aliens trying to kill us all made me uncomfortable. And scared. And then the other thing made me devastated."

Tony repeats himself. "Fuck, I'm so sorry-"

Peter squeezes his hand again. "But I knew you'd come back. I remade Vision. It took me five years but I knew if I could do that then we'd find a way for you. And it didn't matter how long it took because I knew it wasn't just a willing young body you wanted. It was me, at any age. I just had to keep being me, sir. And I'm _really_ good at that."

Tony pulls his hand back and leans forward to rest his elbows on his knees and his forehead on his fingers, palms pressed to closed eyes. "You really are," he admits.

"I knew," Peter continues murmuring, as if Tony had not spoken, "that you'd come back."

The breath that Peter scrapes in next to him is audible over the rushing in Tony's ears, and it sounds like Peter's gearing up to say something else so Tony says nothing, content to just feel for now. Content to just feel shitty and exhilarated and absolved and damned and trapped and _saved_ in equal measure.

"I knew you'd come back. I knew you'd be worth the wait. And you were and you will be. Fuck, I can't wait for the rest, but god- sir, can I kiss you again?"

Tony exhales harshly, not used to so much innuendo from Peter but picturing it now. _I love you, I love you, I love you,_ Tony hears run through his mind, in Peter's voice of two minutes ago. He's so fucked.

But Peter doesn't say it again, and he doesn't try to coax Tony into saying it back or into getting in the bed they're sitting on, which is how Tony knows the kid really is all grown up. He just lets Tony sit there, in the arc reactor blue bedroom, and freak out for as long as he likes.

"Not right now, if that's okay?" he finally says and Peter just nods seriously and takes his hand instead.

 _I'm so fucked,_ Tony thinks again.

***

It takes months. 

It takes months because if Romanoff knew, then he needs to talk to her first. Tony can’t tell Pepper, can’t hurt her that way. He can’t talk to Rhodey because Rhodey _does_ know, but tells Tony very clearly that he wishes he didn’t, and he’s allowed. Rhodey is his own person who has been through just as much as Tony has, and he’s not here simply to support Tony’s growth into what is rapidly and alarmingly starting to look like the possibility of a man in love with another man three decades his junior, so. Yeah, he abides by Rhodey’s wishes.

And fuck Steve. Fuck Steve Rogers until his colors run, because even _Tony_ wouldn’t have left Wilson and Barnes like that. Thor? _Thor_ gets to leave, not Steve. Thor gets to leave because his whole family was gone, when Steve’s was right there waiting for him.

Natasha was always the best option anyway, and not just by elimination.

Until that’s possible, Tony talks to Bruce—who he trusts to speak for him, inherently biased—and Happy—who he trusts to speak for Peter. 

“So you wanna screw the kid,” Happy starts, over a beer.

Tony chokes, over water, which is disgusting. Fish fuck in water. “It’s not like that-”

Happy’s gotten a lot more patient over the years, but no less blunt. “So what _is_ it like, then?”

“Yeah, Tony,” Bruce says, the bulk of him leaning with his big, green hands on the table with the blueprints for Strange and Van Dyne and Peter’s crazy-ass afterlife particle coalescence machine, "what _is_ it like?”

Tony looks at his fingernails. They’re clean and not ragged, so he can’t stretch that moment out for too long. “Okay, so I wanna screw the kid. But only because he won’t stop asking.”

Happy takes a long, long pull of his beer before he unpacks that. Tony figures that’s fair.

That conversation doesn’t really go anywhere on the subject of Peter, because Bruce sees something in the plans that turns into a breakthrough and Happy takes his leave as Tony jumps up, excited, to go and nerd out.

But Tony gets a text several minutes later that he reads while Friday is compiling a new iteration of the blueprint, and Happy has written: _I figure Hell already got its chance with you, knowing that you’ve been obsessed with that kid since day one, and it spit you back out. If you subscribe to that kind of thing, I figure it’s a point in your favor. Also, if you mess him up, I mess you up, boss. Good luck._

So that’s alright then.

And at the end of a truly impressive lab bender, with Banner begging to tap out, the jolly green, gentle giant leans on the table once more and asks him, point-blank, “Why is this so important to you?”

“It’s Nat,” Tony all but snaps. _Duh._

“No, the other thing.”

_Oh._

“I want him to have everything he wants. It’s not my fault that all he wants is me, for some reason,” Tony tells him.

“Are you sure? Did you check your work on that one, old friend?”

_Fuck._

***

He asks Peter about it when they’re already in bed. Not like that.

It’s only for when Peter can’t sleep. Tony wears his thick, black old-man sweatpants to bed, and a band shirt, and tries to be as unappealing as possible. Peter, in contrast, wears the softest, thinnest pajamas Tony’s ever seen on a guy. Completely on purpose, he’s convinced.

They split the difference, he guesses.

“Hey, kid?”

“Mmm?” Peter hums back, eyes already closed, nearly asleep now. A few minutes of Tony rubbing out the knots in his shoulders tends to do that.

“Did you date anyone while I was gone?”

 _Or did I ruin you for anyone else with my being a creep who can only express myself through paint chips or when I think we’re about to die?_ He’s not sure what he wants to be true, anymore.

“My friend, Michelle,” Peter answers sleepily, like it’s not a big deal. The light’s still on, so Tony can see that Peter doesn’t even open his eyes.

“Oh?”

“Yeah, it was fun. She taught me how to kiss,” Peter informs him. He rolls toward Tony to demonstrate briefly, just a little peck, but Tony lets himself get caught up in it anyway. He gives Peter a peck of his own, then a proper forehead kiss.

He disentangles them long enough to turn the light off. “So why did it end?” Tony asks, when that’s done.

Peter plays with his arm hair idly, which tickles Tony but he holds it in. "It was kind of the middle of a crisis, with Beck. And after I moved out of May's, she just seemed to question a lot. Why did I trust Beck in the first place? Why didn't you use Edith against Thanos? Why didn't I just use her to protect May? Why was I in charge of such a thing to begin with? What if I set it on Flash or, uh… Brad. That sort of thing."

"Those are all extremely valid questions, Peter. She's a smart one."

"Yeah, she is."

There's a pause and Peter shifts, sounding more awake.

"So's Pepper," Peter adds.

"Kid-"

"No, I-" Peter starts, stops himself. Tony waits. He starts again. "That wasn't a dig. M'just saying, sometimes the answer to those kinds of questions is really just 'it seemed like a good idea at the time'. And nobody's perfect. That's really it. But you can't just say that to Michelle."

 _Or Pepper._ That goes unsaid. But Tony knows what Peter is getting at. "Everybody expects us to just know what to do, as soon as the mask goes on. Even if the situation is totally bizarre."

"Yeah. And she made the point that if I'm allowed to make mistakes like that then what separates me from the next crazy that thinks their actions are necessary and their version of events is correct, when they maybe aren’t? And she wasn’t wrong."

"Doesn't sound like it," he agrees amiably. He wants to hear what else Peter has to say.

"But I also wasn't gonna stop. Because then the next person who doesn't get helped, what? Because I needed to feel good about myself? Because it was a choice between being an unassailably unproblematic boyfriend or nothing at all? No. Then that's on me, that's my fault."

Peter's not telling Tony anything he doesn't know. If being a superhero was all about being liked, there'd be a hell of a lot more of them.

"She deserved better," Peter finally concludes, sounding a little sad.

This conversation is too heavy for two in the morning. Tony makes a joke. "Oh, and I don't?"

Peter snuggles into him, face practically in Tony's armpit, hand on Tony's chest. "Nope, you're just as messed up as me."

"Thanks."

"You're welcome."

They fall asleep pretty quickly after that.

Tony wakes up before Peter, a consequence of being older. He sort of has to pee but doesn't want to disturb the younger man who is all tangled up in him. 

Instead, he stares at the ceiling and thinks hard about what he's doing, and all the ways it could go wrong.

He'd been that way when Morgan was born, too. He'd catastrophized. He'd waited and waited and waited to hold her, convinced that he'd ruin her life as soon as he was in it.

Then she'd reached out chubby little newborn baby arms so shaky and involuntary and guided by nothing like sight since she could hardly see a thing at that stage, but she'd reached right out for him all the same. And his imagination had bloomed with the possibility of all the ways it could go _right._

Tony moves Peter away from him gently and goes to take a piss and a shower.

“Tony?” Peter calls into the steamy bathroom, some minutes later.

“No, it’s a burglar. I came in just to use your shower. Sorry, man.”

“Rude,” says Peter, voice sounding closer as he presumably comes into the bathroom. “I actually have paranoia sometimes when I’m in the shower that someone’s going to come in and kidnap me.”

Tony pauses with Peter’s soap all over him. “You _what?_ ”

“Yeah,” Peter confirms, and there’s a little metal _clang_ that means Peter is probably sitting on the sink vanity and let his feet hit the brass shelving underneath. “Like if they had some kind of thing to inject me with that took my spider powers away? And then I start strategizing.”

Tony starts rinsing off, smile fond. “Strategizing?”

“Sure. If I smell and look good enough when they pull me out of the shower, then maybe they’ll take a shine to me instead of murdering me, you know? That kind of thing.”

Tony’s dumbfounded. He shuts off the water. _That's a little weird, Pete,_ he thinks but doesn't say.

He grabs his towel from where it's flung over the top of the shower and dries off slowly, pondering. It's not the kind of fantasy Tony himself has ever entertained, having been kidnapped himself and having found it decidedly unsexy, but he doesn't want to think about that right now.

 _Hmmm._ Still, Tony kind of likes it. He likes that Peter's sexual development hasn't been tainted by him, that Peter can be into something so completely out of left field and not at all related to Tony.

"You still out there?" 

Peter hums affirmatively. 

Tony wraps his towel around his waist and flings the shower curtain—a classy Star Wars all-over print, of course—to the side with a flourish. "Ta da," he deadpans.

Wide-eyed, Peter makes immediate grabby hands at him from his perch on the sink. "Oh my god, please tell me I'll look that good at fifty-whatever," Peter babbles, seemingly taken in by his first sight of Tony's bare chest, scars and all.

"You'll look even better, baby."

Peter groans into Tony's still-damp shoulder, and practically wraps his pajama-clad legs around Tony's waist. Peter's hands smooth up the skin of Tony's back, holding him close.

Tony, God help him, loves it. "I'll make you a deal, my favorite young adult."

"I'm listening," Peter's lips say against the edge of Tony's collarbone. His spine is curled in a little slouch to manage it, and Tony can't have that.

He puts his water-warm hand against the small of Peter's back until Peter arches it, straightening up and letting his legs relax. Then Tony moves his thumb to the center of Peter's chin, his other fingers curling under to brush the soft spot under the younger, less-experienced man's jaw, and guides Peter into a languid kiss at just the right angle.

The other hand clutches his towel, because Tony knows Peter is a sneaky one.

Sure enough, Peter's hand knocks against his after a few moments of trading little smooches that connect their mouths, over and over.

"Oh, oops," Peter says unconvincingly, lips vibrating up close like this.

"Nope, that's the deal, sweetheart. No sex."

It's kind of thrilling, saying the word. Peter has a tendency to only use body language and half-bitten-off partial sentences to broach the subject, and Tony has so far avoided the topic altogether.

But Peter scrunches his face at him. "Listen, old man, I know you're getting senile. But this 'no sex' thing? You've been back for half a year and we're _already doing that._ Or _not_ doing 'that', as it were."

Tony re-adjusts his gentle grip on Peter’s face. "Don't fight me on this, and I'll take you out. Show you the town. Let everyone know you're my favorite."

He watches as Peter's pupils blow out round and dark. "Like a date?"

Letting go, Tony uses the backs of his fingers to brush an errant wave of Peter’s bedhead hair away from his ear. "Not even _like_ a date. Just: _a date._ Call me old-fashioned."

The smile Peter gives him is slow and genuine. "Okay, Old-Fashioned, nice to meet you. I’m Peter.”

Tony kisses Peter again, just to shut him up. It works, temporarily. 

"Okay. Take me on a date," Peter murmurs into his mouth after long swaying moments of makeouts so syrupy that Tony has to work hard to keep Peter perched on the sink, even accounting for the kid's superior sense of balance. "Take me on a date, and no sex for now," he continues, agreeing for once, and Tony thrills.

"For now," Tony breathes back with a smile.

***

A few more months go by, and then one day it’s _the_ day. It’s the day that they’re going to try the machine.

As soon as Natasha clears medical and Strange, the plan is that she will go and stay with the Bartons for two weeks. Non-negotiable. 

Tony opens his mouth and Clint points at him threateningly. 

"I was just gonna say I'm glad she's back, relax about it."

Arms crossed, he shares a look with Peter, who looks exhausted, sweaty, relieved. But Peter still finds the energy to roll his eyes, so Tony guesses that means he's okay.

Natasha, though, looks a little green. Tony knows exactly how she feels, and she's looking at him like she knows he was dead too, like she can tell even though she shouldn't know yet.

She needs to get out of here and rest.

"Call me, Romanoff. We'll swap Soul Stone stories!" he calls, walking backwards to give everyone the impression that the show is over without doing anything so obvious as pointing out the way Nat looks like she's clinging to her ability to stand up by a thread. Clint gives him the finger. Peter pulls him away.

When they slip back into Tony's room at the compound, Peter rounds on him.

"What is wrong with you?"

“I don’t know, kid, but I’m sure you’re about to tell me.”

Peter, head pulled back and with eyes squinting and offended, walks away into the ensuite. Tony hears the shower start and he deflates.

“Sorry, I-” He’s cut off as Peter’s lab coat gets flung at his face, followed by a T-shirt.

It takes every humble bone in his body, i.e. two, i.e. both pinky fingers, for Tony to make himself knock on the bathroom door that’s just been shut in his face.

“Honey, I’m sorry. Look, I’m just relieved we didn’t vaporize ourselves or get sucked into an interdimensional vortex or something. And I was worried about her and everyone staring. And I-”

The door opens. Peter’s in his jeans, still. His chest and feet are bare. “And you _what_?”

A pause, during which the beginnings of steam escape into the bedroom. “I missed her,” Tony manages. “In the beginning, it was just her and I… and Rhodey. She paid attention to who I was behind the mask before anyone else did, anyone who didn’t already know.”

Peter softens a little. “Okay. I get that. I thought it was about the file.”

Tony leans in the doorway. “It’s maybe a little bit about the file,” he says flirtatiously.

He’s left leaning. The door closes again, though not all the way. The invitation is clear; _come in or don’t, whatever._

Tony leaves well enough alone and uses the guest shower in Vision’s rarely-used room. When he comes out in his robe, Tony supposes it’s not really all that surprising to see Viz there. Thankfully, Wanda isn’t around; he’d hate to interrupt them doing whatever they do, which. Probably some kind of tantric mutant mind-melding.

 _God, is that still a thing?_ Wanda and Vision. Who would have thought? Even this many years on, it surprises him.

(He still can’t decide if the age gap is between a consciousness in its fifties and a twenty-something, or a twenty-something and a consciousness that was only a few years old when they got together. Either way…) 

“Tony, I would speak with you, sir.”

Tony valiantly ignores the odd mix of informal and formal address. That’s what you get when you put him and Bruce and JARVIS in a metaphorical jar and shake it. “Go ahead.”

“It has not escaped my notice that you and Mr. Parker often cohabitate, if casually. I wanted to encourage you to make this fact known, preferably soon.”

He’s not _surprised_. He’s just puzzled. “And why is that?”

“To spare Miss Natasha. She is very observant. If she’s forced to covertly bear witness to that which I believe only myself and those you’ve explicitly told are privy, she will face a dilemma. Either she’ll feel she should speak if she believes your relationship untoward, or she’ll feel compelled to keep the secret.”

“Probably both.”

“Indeed. And don’t you think the Black Widow has done enough to wipe her slate clean? I’d think we ought to help her keep it that way, if we can.”

 _That’s why you’re you, Vision._ _But you’re working off incomplete information._

“She already knows. Hate to burst your bubble. It’s in my file.”

Vision tilts his head like he’s listening to something only he can hear. “It isn’t.”

Okay, _now_ Tony’s surprised. “Huh.”

_Well, isn’t that something?_

But Tony gives Peter the benefit of the doubt, sliding into bed next to the kid in his boxers and some shirt he borrowed off Peter and never gave back. It’s the science pun one that’s identical to one he actually used to own, one that Pepper stole years ago. _The circle of laundry,_ he thinks.

“So, about the file,” he starts.

“I don’t know why you need to hear it from the source,” Peter interrupts, uncharacteristically annoyed. “Why can’t you just take my word for it?”

_Manipulative and defensive. God, he really is so young. Too young to not double down. Maybe scared of being found out._

Tony tries a trick he’s learned… giving ground, to see if Peter’s innate goodness will make itself known, once he’s no longer under pressure. “Okay, baby,” Tony says softly. “Come here.”

Peter snuffles into Tony’s chest in the dark. Tony focuses very hard on only saying things that are honest. He’s not trying to entrap Peter.

“I could take your word for it, I guess. It’s not really Nat’s job to give us permission. That’s not really fair to her, is it?” Tony continues, and that’s all perfectly true.

There’s the shift of sheets and the redistribution of weight in the bed as Peter squirms a little.

A beat. “Love you, kid,” Tony reminds him.

Peter blows out a breath. “Why?”

So needy and sweet, his young man. But Tony can play this game. “Because you’re good. And you’d never lie to me. I trust you.”

Peter doesn’t take the out, doesn’t come forward about the file, and Tony’s deeply disappointed.

“I wanted it to be true, what she wrote, for a long time after you died. I wanted to be special,” Peter _does_ admit, which is interesting. “Then one day I was working on fixing Viz and I found it. Right there in the last update before Thanos, before he took off for Scotland. You patched part of his understanding about some lab work you’d done and wanted him to have, too.”

Tony thinks hard. He must go silent, because Peter’s squirming becomes unbearable fast.

“Are you mad?” Pete man exhales, voice as breathy and small as he’s ever heard it. Tony knows Peter’s no wallflower, but he’s also such a genuinely good person, and talented… he doesn’t have a lot of experience taking criticism in his life and it shows, sometimes.

“What do I have to be mad about?” he asks, still trying to make space for Peter to tell the whole truth. “I’m still processing. Tell me more.”

“I was checking for circular references, anything too complex that he would have needed the Mind Stone to resolve properly. I was afraid that without it some of the more human experiences would overload him.”

He nods before he realizes Peter probably can’t see that in the dark. “Makes sense.”

“And then I found the emotional undercurrent running through the experiences. Normally the process to patch something for him stripped all that extraneous stuff out, but you’d revisited the memory in BARF too many times. So many times, in fact, that the emotions were baked into the memory and couldn’t be stripped out. And it was a memory of you and me.”

Tony knows the one. _Oh, God._

“Yeah, that one,” Peter continues, presumably reacting to the sudden tenseness of Tony’s body in the bed. “Me telling you about the upcoming trip to MoMa, a few weeks ahead of time. You, rather disingenuously I might add, questioning why a math and science school was taking us to an art museum. You had that little smile. And there's me explaining that I’d gotten into an argument months before with Flash about your modern art collection and you being a well-rounded person who liked all sorts of things, like Burger King and Star Wars and dumb TV shows and art and sports and fashion, normal stuff, in addition to all the science.”

“You were so upset about it that you ended up venting to Happy’s voicemail thinking he never really checks it, since you used to text him anyway,” Tony says slowly, remembering. “I listened to it and sent a very pointed note and a functionally blank check for some ASAP arts programming.”

“And I confronted you in the lab,” Peter reminds him. He’s still holding onto Tony’s arm between them like Tony’s going to give him shit for fudging a bit about the file. Like he doesn’t realize that Tony’s far, far more concerned with how embarrassing this little trip down memory lane is.

“And I snapped at you about figuring out how to say thank you when someone gives you a gift, and then we didn’t talk about it. We figured out stage one of preventing Vision’s phasing from glitching out, but no further.”

Peter pushes his face into Tony’s shoulder. “Exactly.”

Guilt builds in Tony’s gut. _And then I spent weeks replaying our interaction trying to figure out how I felt, not working on phase two._ And that’s before the rest of the corollary implications occur to him. _That was all before the dusting. I was already feeling-_

Fuck, he’s a piece of shit. An obsessive, possessive piece of shit with an unhealthy interest in his then-teenaged protégé, while he was engaged no less.

“It was beautiful,” Peter informs him, a statement that seems like a non sequitur at first.

Tony feels a little sick. “What was?”

“The internal natural language node. All the stuff you said to yourself in BARF, trying to figure it out. It was like looking at a map of what it is to love someone on multiple levels. I’ve never seen human love represented so complexly and yet neatly.” Peter seems awed. Idealistic. Innocent.

Okay, Tony feels _a lot_ sick.

 _He was so young. You fucking fucker,_ Tony tells himself. _And he still is, in some ways, if he still thinks you hung the moon. He's just too young. Face facts._

Peter's still looking at him almost dreamily but his expression shifts when he notices how Tony has stiffened up.

"Are you okay?" 

"No."

They break up.

***

Tony watches Vision with Wanda and sees it now. The eagerness to protect. The slightly possessive way they are with each other. Enthusiastically enraptured, the pair of them. The way their energies are the same, resonant, but it somehow pulls them together instead of causing like-to-like magnetic repulsion… it's too familiar.

He knows, logically, that Wanda and Viz were a thing before the update that sent through Tony's obsession with Peter. But he doesn't think they were actually passionately sleeping together until then, and Tony finds the timeline damning.

Leave it to him to take the most incorruptible, Mjolnir-worthy being ever created and accidentally gift it his borderline predatory emotional state.

“What’s that thing in your forehead called, the new one?” he asks, motioning at his own forehead like Vision’s new gem thing is a bit of ketchup he’s trying to help Morgan wipe off her own face. “No, there.”

“It is Vision,” Vision says.

Tony blinks rapidly. “No, _you’re_ Vision. Who’s on first? What’s on second? You Need A Linguistic Patch is on third. Home run!”

Peter’s watching him out of the corner of his eye, Tony notices, and he snorts quietly. Tony cranks it up a notch.

“Next question, what about Steve? If we can fix Nat from being—pardon me for saying—six stories of splat, can we not make him young, blond, and beautiful again?”

"You're such a fucking asshole," Peter tells him across the lab, Bruce looking torn between them.

"Oh, definitely," Tony quips back. "No argument there."

"Not everything can just go back to the way it was before!" Peter informs him, volume rising. "It's not up to you. He made his choice and it was his, whether you or me or anyone else thinks it was a good one or not!" 

"Or not," Tony says flippantly, because at least when Peter's angry, he's not ignoring him. Tony's fully embraced the whole 'negative attention is still attention’ thing. It takes him back to being a kid, himself.

It does, however, beg the question: why is Peter letting this particular bee up his bonnet?

"Also, are we still talking about Steve or are we talking about you?" Tony asks shrewdly.

“Oh, here comes an avalanche of bullshit disguised as intellect,” Peter responds viciously. He’s a little whirlwind, just a tempest of unbridled energy born of anger. Tony watches as Peter fiddles with a screwdriver, looking bereft, unable to land on a project. Natasha isn’t quite back yet, so they can’t start the post-resurrection interviews. Tony, for one, is glad he hadn’t had to go through that given that he just sort of… came back. No fancy machine required.

Huh. He should probably try to figure that out at some point.

“No, sorry, you’ll have to go without my wisdom today, Padawan. I’ve just had a brilliant-beyond-brilliant idea.”

“I’m not a fucking Padawan, okay; I’m sorry, how many death-defying particle coalescence machines have _you-_ ”

“Bye-bye, baby.” Tony blows him a kiss as Bruce looks on.

Peter throws the screwdriver after him, but not like _hard_ or anything, so Tony will forgo putting him on the masterlist of supervillains just yet. Also, so _this_ is what being the dumper and not the dumpee feels like.

(‘For your own good,’ he’d said. ‘Just tell the truth,’ he’d said.)

It’s possible he owes Pepper flowers or something.

(‘I don’t understand,’ Peter had said back, and that feeling at least had been mutual.)

***

Strange isn’t precisely happy to see him. _Quelle 'shoqueur', or however that goes,_ Tony thinks.

But honestly, if Strange didn’t want Tony to visit him, he should have moved. Nevermind that it’s like an ancient Sanctum, or whatever. Strange can bend dimensions, surely he can figure out a little bit of witchy Re/Max.

“Can I help you?”

“How did I get back here?” he asks, cutting straight to the point.

Strange makes a show of leaning out the door after Tony passes him to get inside. “Well, I don’t see a cab driving off, so I’m assuming walked or flew?”

“Ha. Ha. No, I mean how did I get back _here_?” Tony emphasizes. He pats his palms all over his chest as if to indicate the corporeal plane.

“It’s been nine months and you’re only asking _now_?” Strange asks archly. “I could have had a whole child in that time.”

Tony looks the other man up and down. “ _Could_ you? That’s news.”

“Oh, can it. You know what I meant.”

“ _Do_ I?”

Strange huffs, staring at him. “There were significant time artifacts in the signature of your arrival.”

“Artifacts.” Tony doesn’t even make fun of him. This is important.

“Yes.” Strange uncrosses his arms, though he still looks uncomfortable. “You won’t find anything similar on the Russian. Peter’s theory and application were sound. He didn’t so much remake her as he did tap into the invisible particles of meaning and connection that are all around us, energize them to run a route through the universe to wherever Thanos scattered the atoms of the Soul Stone, and give it express gravitational orders to give her back. The stone did the rest, probably out of pure shock. It might not be so impressed next time, once the novelty has worn off. The machine acts as a beacon, a safe place for the stone to send her, nothing more.”

There’s a lot to unpack there. It makes sense, now, why Peter had insisted on Banner’s involvement. Even though it never went anywhere in the traditional sense of ‘anywhere’, she and Banner _had_ had a connection. Of course, they’d _all_ loved her, but… Banner was half-Hulk now, and the Hulk had always felt a calm around her that no one could explain. 

But that leaves more questions than answers.

First off, who is _Peter_ to be commanding Infinity Stones? Strange, he understands. Even Bruce, to a degree, with him having made a snap and lived it down. But _Peter?_ One of these things is not like the other.

Also: “So why the hell didn’t _I_ need a beacon? I ended up here with you. And with time ‘artifacts’ in my ‘signature’?” 

Strange doesn’t immediately answer, but the answer is obvious when he lays it out like that. _The Time Stone._

Of fucking course.

“You know,” Strange informs him, too casual, “Peter spent a lot of time here, after he managed to fix Vision. He wanted to make sure that Vision would be alright, without the Mind Stone. Since I’m the only other person he knows who had an Infinity Stone and lost it, he wanted my perspective.”

Tony goes cold all over. Jesus. He hadn’t even thought of that. “And what did you tell him?”

“That some things, when we’re connected that powerfully, are never really gone from us.”

“Lordy, Strange. Next time just cue to organ music and the dramatic title card. You can just say 'quantum entanglement'. Don’t have to be so fucking cryptic.”

But Tony’s left hand (and also the rest of his body) shakes in the cab all the way home, Iron Man stored heavy in his chest. He doesn’t trust himself to fly.

And his knuckles itch and burn.

***

“What did you _do,_ kid? You better tell me right-” Tony barges into the compound to ask, but oh.

“Mr. Parker left an hour ago, with a frankly flimsy excuse,” Vision informs him, Wanda at his dress-shirt-covered elbow. Tony swears a blue streak in response, one that makes even Barnes and his complicated little man-bun give him the side-eye. Tony flew all the way here, landed on the balcony, even. For nothing.

Also, there’s a hell of a lot of well-dressed and unexpected company here, which-

Fuck. He forgot.

Rhodey and Clint come off the elevator with Natasha between them. She looks healthier than he’s ever seen her. Her hair is red—the rest of the lingering peroxide blonde cut away—and her eyes are bright. There’s color to her cheeks, and she lights up when she sees they’ve all assembled to greet her.

“Guys,” she says, into the hush. Tony’s never seen her smile like that, so innocently happy. Even when they’d been at the Barton ranch the first time and the little agents had come running out, she’d been tight around the eyes and mouth. “Guys, we did it.”

“Fuck _yeah_ , we did,” Sam Wilson says back, rushing forward to hug her, and a cheer goes up. From that moment on, it’s controlled chaos, and Tony tries to figure out how he got away with hosting a welcome back party in his own damn compound, without putting in an ounce of work.

Pepper materializes. _Of course._ “Tony,” she greets him.

“Miss Potts- honey, Pep. I mean. Uh. Mrs…”

“Hughes,” the man standing beside her supplies, offering his hand. Tony shakes it absently.

“Where’s Morgan?” he asks suspiciously. _Not home alone, I hope. She’s barely ten._

“May has her,” Pepper states coolly, like she knows exactly what he’s thinking. She probably does. “I think that’s where Peter went, if you’d like to chase him. But I trust her to mind our daughter for one night; she helped out a lot when you-”

“Right.” God, he’s such a disaster. “I wasn’t saying- I know you have a right to be here.”

Tony suddenly remembers telling Peter that it had been just himself and Rhodey and Nat in the beginning… but that’s not quite true. Pepper, too, had been there. Happy. Fury. He looks around for them.

What he sees instead is Natasha, freshly-chopped red hair and bangs curling under at the edges, pressing herself happily into Steve’s wrinkled hands for the first dance of the evening, as they dance a shuffling slow dance, foreheads pressed together. It’s like something out of a movie. Not romantic, not platonic, but just… cinematic.

Steve twirls her—which she spins into gracefully—then passes Natasha carefully from his hands to the Winter Soldier’s, who lets go of Sam so Sam can dance good-naturedly with the old man. Clint watches and looks like he might mischievously cut in.

Tony’s throat goes tight, even as Rhodey says something that has Thor howling boisterously and Bruce smiling into his oversized glass.

He’s staying. If the kid wants to run from him and his completely righteous anger, let him. Tony’s fucking staying.

The gang’s all here.

***

He does call May Parker, though, hours later. The party has just hit that point where everyone’s full and a little tired and the drinks are about to start really flowing, along with the daring truths. Tony’s not sure he’s ready for that.

“Hello?”

“It’s Tony Stark. I hope I’m not disturbing you,” he explains uncharacteristically politely. But it’s never good to anger Aunt Bae. “I called to tell my daughter goodnight.”

“I’ll get her,” May promises, voice softening. “Be right back.” And there’s a thump like she’s left the phone in the couch cushions.

Tony, for his part, is relieved. He and Morgan do this every night since he got back, whether Pepper has her or not, whether he’s at Peter’s apartment or not. He wouldn’t want to break his streak.

“Dad?” the little girl says down the line, after a slight scuffling noise.

“Hey, Maguna. Whatcha been up to?” he asks her.

“Sleepin’.”

 _“Sleepin’?”_ he repeats, hamming it up. He checks his watch. “It’s not even ten o’clock on a non-school night, where’s your sense of adventure?”

“Peter came over and we went to the park with Aunt May and he taught me how to do a flip off the monkey bars. It took a lot of practice. I’m tired.”

“Okay, sweetie. I’m sorry I woke you up. I just wanted to say good night and how much I love you.”

“How much?” she all but giggles.

“You know how much, Morgan H. Stark. I know you do.” He pulls the phone away in expectation of her shrieking her laughter into his ear—a parent’s sixth sense—and smiles down at her picture on his phone.

He puts it back in place to listen again as she, all pleased and shy and assured of her father’s love in a way he never was, confirms, “Three thousand?”

“Got it in one.”

***

Natasha corners him in his office.

“Not happy to see me? What’s a girl gotta do?”

He looks up from papers that are meaningless. They’ve been there for a few days and they’ll be there for a few days more. Tony has no reason to be in here, not really. He hung up with Morgan at least half an hour ago.

“Well, jumping off a cliff is no way of getting my attention, Romanoff,” he tells her, flirting easily in the way they’ve done for years, since before everything got so messed up. Tony leans back in his desk chair and lets Nat step into the circle of lamplight that half-spills over his desk, the rest on the floor at her feet.

“Darn,” she responds dryly, her eyes bright in the low gloom. But he knows her; she has that checkmate look to her. “Of course, neither is snapping yourself into oblivion. Though it certainly wasn’t my attention you were after.”

Her fingertips skirt the edge of the desk, the nails done up in some kind of hideously teenaged varnish with thick chunks of glitter and patchy application, a relic of her two weeks with the Barton pack, he’s sure. It’s something he recognizes… Morgan paints his nails sometimes, though he generally makes her use the green or black she got out of a kit at Halloween.

Regardless, he’s touched by the detail and Tony stands at the same time as Nat leans her thigh on the free space at the corner and he ends up gathering her up and breathing into the top of her head, her face in his chest. “I missed you, we all did.”

It’s a brief hug, nothing too schmoopy, but Natasha still pulls her hair behind her ear and peers at him. “I’m glad the little Spider was able to bring us back. Bruce gave me most of the story… he must be like you, to be able to do this for us. You did good, Tony.”

He knows he did good. He knows. Hopefully it’s enough to make up for everything _else_ he also did. “Yeah, he is. Really smart, I mean, though not so much like me aside from that-”

She covers her mouth with her hand with a little eye roll. She still manages a little sarcastic muttering, hand or no hand. “I didn’t say really smart. I said ‘like you’. Think highly of yourself, don’t you?”

“Always.”

The hand drops and Nat tilts her face up, a sudden challenge in her demeanor. “Liar,” she murmurs.

He needs a drink and crosses the room accordingly. Tony fiddles with the bar cart a minute and she lets him; he’s forgotten what it’s like to have old friends, after almost three years of silent, figurative Cold War footing, followed by five of protective isolation. He had forgotten how Natasha had ways of making him talk, same as Pepper, same as Rhodey, same as Bruce, same as Steve.

It’s just that those people are all different now after having lived five years while he was dead, and she’s here—a little happier and a little healthier—but she’s still fundamentally the same, deep in the heart, as the last time he saw her.

Kinda like Peter.

“What else did our Bruce-y boy tell you? Are you two gonna finally make a go of it?” he asks, downing a couple of fingers of burning whatever, something expensive, in-between questions.

Natasha sighs at him. “If you’re about to make me something like a ‘better offer’, don’t. I didn’t miss you that much.”

“For shame, Miss Rushman. I would never.”

“Liar,” Nat says again, even as Tony hands her a drink of her own. “But I heard about your… other entanglement.”

He eyes her.

“From the Soldier,” she explains.

Yeah, fuck that guy. But. He does kind of want to talk about it. “Is it insensitive of me with you all baby fresh from the afterlife, to ask you to be Team Mom once again and talk to me about my crush? I’m seriously asking. I’m trying to grow as a person.”

Nat slams back the drink just as the door opens to admit Rhodey to their little secret club. “Good luck with that,” she tells him, not unkindly. She makes a face, which throws him for a loop since normally Nat can hold her liquor- oh. “Wait, _your_ crush? I thought Peter was the one with the crush.”

Yeah, Tony’d make that face if he were her too.

Rhodey freezes with his back to the door. “This again. Look, no judgment Tones, but I just wanted Nat to come back and dance with Sam so I can sit one out. They’re playing Waterfalls and he’s _insisting-_ ”

“The crushing is a mutual thing. So was the dumping, I think.”

Tony feels rather than sees the look Nat and Rhodey share. Rhodey’s strong fingers smooth and wind up his forearm as Tony leans heavily against the front edge of the desk, Natasha’s warmth still near. Rhodey hits that spot on his forearm that’s been sore since his sophomore year at MIT and when Tony's hand spasms and unclenches, Rhodey takes the nearly-dropped crystal lowball tumbler from him deftly.

“I _think_ it was mutual. But I started it, even though the last thing I want is to be away from him. That’s why, right? If I want something that much, then I shouldn’t have it,” Tony says to no one.

“That’s been my general rule, I admit,” Rhodey starts gently, “but maybe it’s time for some revisions.”

Nat chuckles softly, somewhere behind Tony’s shoulder. “Speaking of revisions-”

But Tony’s head swims a little as TLC plays from the main room, his forehead pressed to Rhodey’s palm which feels him as if for a temperature. Here, with two of the most attractive people he knows, two people age-appropriate for him, two people who he’s known for forever and who have never (Rhodey) or almost-never (Natasha) betrayed him… he should want one of them. Both of them, maybe, but at the very least Tony’s less-than-latent bisexuality should fucking _pick one or the other._

But all he wants is Peter and it’s making him sick.

***

In the morning, hangover hazed, Tony finds a pair of files on his nightstand. It’s Natasha’s file on him, and Natasha’s file on Peter. He doesn’t bother wondering how she got into his room when it’s supposed to be locked down.

Tony gets some hair of the dog and then reads through her revisions, things she actually sat down to say about him and Peter. Natasha, the smartest of them all, should have been leading the team from the beginning… she’s even dated everything, tracked the changes, kept some stuff undigitized for security’s sake. That explains Vision’s blind spot.

The really personal stuff goes all the way back to just after he got back to Earth with Nebula. ‘I lost the kid,’ he remembers saying. He dreams about it often enough.

He would have done anything to bring Peter back, after that, it just makes sense.

Tony lets the folder, open, tent over his face for a second. It blocks out the morning light boring out holes in his head and he breathes in the dark, forgotten half-smell of fresh paper. Natasha’s knife-clean handwriting saying, not in so many words, what Peter had always maintained… he was telling the truth. The sudden clarity of realization, all of it.

This is all there is to it: maybe no one’s ever been as obsessed with each other as he and Peter are, and had it end well. Maybe no one with such an age and experience gap have ever managed to not fuck each other up.

But no one else has ever been to space and had a moon thrown at them, crumpled to ash in each other’s arms, tanked a whole Big Bang across their knuckles and up their arm and into every synapse in their brain just to bring one person back and tacked the rest of the unlucky half of the universe on as a side order, like french fries. No one else has done all that, either.

Maybe he should give himself a fucking break.

***

Tony hears the rock music before he even unlocks the door to Peter’s apartment… _through_ the sound-proofing. That gives him pause.

Then again, he’s never been a cautious type. “Peter?” he calls, somewhat fruitlessly against the sheer _noise_ , as he comes in.

There are boxes everywhere. _Now_ he’s scared.

“Peter?” he calls again, a little louder.

The music cuts out. “I’m moving out,” a voice informs him from down the hall.

Feeling like a broken record, and in more ways than one, Tony asks for a third time. This time, it’s very quietly. “Peter?”

“Nah. I’m just some burglar that decided to take everything at once, in the noisiest way possible.” Peter comes into the living room with another box to add to the pile.

“You missed Natasha’s party,” Tony says dumbly. Numbly. This can’t be happening.

The self-deprecating smile he gets is more of a grimace. “We never really met. I don’t think seeing her out of the corner of my eye in Germany really counts.” Peter goes to return to his bedroom, presumably to get another box, but spins back around. “Can I have my extra keys back, by the way?”

Tony clenches them tighter in his hand. He doesn’t know what to say besides just ‘no’. Which would be awfully controlling of him, he reminds himself. Tony takes a deep breath.

Peter raises his eyebrows expectantly.

“Don’t leave," he tries. _Please._

Peter’s facial expression hardens minutely as Tony watches, helpless. “You don’t get to say that,” Peter informs him. Before Tony knows it, Peter’s turning over his own wrist and webbing the keys right from Tony’s grasp. “ _You_ left _me._ ”

Tony follows him down the short hallway. “I came back!” he argues, careful not to raise his voice.

But Peter rounds on him in the doorway to the bedroom anyway. “Yeah, no thanks to you.”

“No thanks to me? Kid, I was fucking _dead_. What would you have me do? If there was any other way, I would have- None of this would have happened, you have to understand, but I had to trust Strange-”

“No!” Peter backs up from him and it throws Tony off-kilter. He’s so used to Peter always pushing into his space, always approaching him. He’s been doing it since he was a kid and Tony was just the big, bad adult in a black suit coming to take his fun away and deliver a little misguided guidance. Tony’s used to that, used to Peter getting so close that their chests sometimes almost brushed.

“What? ‘No’ what, Peter? What is ‘no’ in this scenario? Explain it to me.”

“You didn’t have to trust Strange. You just had to trust me. There were other ways.”

"I'm sorry, baby, okay? I'm sorry-"

"Sorry doesn't cut it, you were _dead_ and now you're pissed at me, for… What? Bringing you back? Jesus Christ, I guess that makes Strange technically right, is that what you're about to argue, Tony?"

Tony lets his own silence damn him.

Peter scrubs a hand through his hair as Tony comes further into the bedroom. "I don't know how far he looked, but I guarantee he didn't know what I would do."

"He looked, he looked through _everything-_ ”

“He looked through everything he thought to look through,” Peter argues grimly. He sits down on the edge of his own bed, dropping rough and fast and landing on the soft surface with a little bounce.

It reminds Tony so forcibly of the teenaged Peter he used to know that he has to swallow hard and think for a second. He’s messing this all up. Slow down. Do the next right thing and all that jazz. “What do you mean by that?”

“He didn’t even consider me, in any of the futures. Refused to. I was a kid to him. I was not acceptable collateral damage. A non-entity,” Peter relays mechanically.

“What did you do?” Tony asks in an echo of hours earlier.

Peter looks up at him. “When Vision got back, I did the post-resurrection interview and some debugging.”

That’s what he expected. Tony nods.

“He’s different now; surely you’ve noticed. Even more human than he’d been before. He and Wanda are more like a real couple than just two attractive people whose weirdness is on the same wavelength. It’s because he doesn’t have the Mind Stone.”

“He has that red thing. But it’s not Reality.”

Peter’s eyes flash a little, mouth twisting. “Be careful, saying it like a name. It’ll give you away every time, sir. That you felt Them, the Stones, even if only for a moment.”

He flinches. “Fine, _the Reality Stone,_ then. It’s red but it’s not that, in his forehead. Are you gonna get to the end of this little ditty any time soon?”

“The ‘red thing’ is something Wanda and I made. It’s her power, basically, crystallized. I coded the best of what I could from everything I had in your notes into it, using the crystal as raw storage. We couldn’t have done it without Shuri and her experience with stuff like vibranium that’s just… beyond science. But it weakens Wanda considerably, of course. It’s like a bone marrow donation, I guess. But unlike bone marrow, she’s not getting that power back.”

“Same thing with Bruce,” Tony butts in. “God, I knew something was off about him. Since Nat. If we hadn’t been fighting, I would have noticed it faster, but he’s less green. And he almost got crushed under some equipment yesterday and he was the one who put it there. He’s weakened.” It dawns on him then, with rapidly mounting horror attached.

He flashes back forcefully to Peter asking him what he would say, if they only had one day left. _Did he take years off his life to add to mine, or some shit?_

“Don’t freak out,” Peter tells him, standing. His hands are up.

“I’m only gonna ask one more time, Peter. _What did you do?”_

“I didn’t, I didn’t, okay? Vision warned me off. Since you died a lot worse than them, with all the stones, it would’ve killed me. It would’ve taken too much. And _unlike you,_ I know that victory for only one of us is no victory at all.”

Tony looks at Peter hard. Christ. He tilts his head and squints and tries to make 2+2=5. _Victory for only one of us is no victory at all,_ he repeats to himself. “Are you saying I can’t live without you? Because, as I'm sure is very obvious by the salt and pepper in my hair, I've spent many, many years alive without you. I can do it.”

“I’m saying if you feel anything close to the way I do, then you don’t _want_ to.”

Tony sits down hard on the bed.

Peter curls around his side like this is their normal bedtime routine. “I made my own fucking time machine and it's so much better than yours,” he whispers viciously, proudly in Tony’s ear. 

_Fuck._

“-and I used it and a really cool suit that Lang helped me with to find that lying fucking Time bastard and all his little atomed-out friends and used it to snatch you straight out of the ground, just like some nightmare shit Beck tried to sell me."

 _Again: Fuck._ He lays back awkwardly, overcome by Peter's diatribe. 

"-and I told them that if they didn’t straighten up and fix your dumb ass, I’d take ‘em down to fucking _quarks and strings_ ; they could try me if they wanted.”

Arm flung over his eyes, Tony dares to ask, “Are you telling me you, all by your lonesome, played quantum entanglement chicken with a passel of singularities?”

“I had help,” Peter corrects him, even as he lays down himself and takes Tony’s face in his hands and turns it so they can look at each other, dislodging Tony’s arm. “But yeah, basically. _Of course I did._ Because you’re the only person in the universe who would ever be surprised by the fact that I chose to do it _for you_ more so than the really out there _how_ of it all _._ The only one. And therefore the only one for me.”

 _The only one._ Tony blinks in rapid succession, and his eyes aren’t watering at all, thanks. “You and me, we’re quantumly entangled? Like, all of our particles?”

“Yep.”

“Enough for you to… what?”

“Find you in the fourteen million, six hundred and sixth future where I was slated to take out Thanos and die. You wouldn’t remember it, it was just a split second for you, but it’s the same you; I made very sure not to do _any_ branching." Peter pauses. "I actually enlisted Steve of all people to help me with that one.”

Tony tries valiantly to take that in. “What, really?”

“Yeah, it’s how he got back here to Barnes without being stuck in an alternate loop; they’re entangled too. Because of the quantum entanglement, we’re really meant to be in the same plane… our particles affect the states of each other. I think it was sort of paining the confines of the universe for one of us to be dead and not the other. I think we sort of did the stones a favor. Less work for them, holding it all together. Also, NASA put out a bulletin like right after you came back that said one of the observable black holes, uh, _closed._ So.”

He breathes out. “I guess we better un-break-up before space-time collapses.”

“Among other things," Peter jokes.

This time, when they kiss, it feels better. A little more right. A little more like something that the ever-reversing poles that guide Tony's moral compass can handle.

After all, the universe is apparently on his side.

 _Quantum entanglement._ He’s spent the whole time since he’s been back, looking for a cosmic thumb’s up telling him what he should do now, with his new life.

That’s about the biggest go ahead he’s bound to get, Tony thinks to himself. _Quantum entanglement, with the kid._

He takes Peter’s hand.

***

Summer passes. It's the longest, hottest, most sexless summer of Tony's life.

Then it's August and Peter turns twenty-three.

Peter, truly the more emotionally stable one between the two of them, lets him be weird all day, all through the party, without Tony's pensiveness appearing to bother him too much. Tony's supremely grateful for not having to explain himself.

While Peter brushes birthday cake and rum off his teeth before hopping in the shower, Tony walks through what he's _still_ calling the 'new' apartment in his mind. He checks the kitchen and spots a few Solo cups that somehow missed their group clean-up endeavor. _Goddamn red Solo cups_. This is what he gets for shacking up with a twenty-something. 

Though, Tony has to admit, they stand up to Avengers-level rough-housing a lot better than crystal or glassware. And the color almost matches the new kitchen's walls, which are a nice _Tuscan Rust_ hue according to Peter. _For Mom,_ Tony thinks, _and for May._

Tony recycles the errant trash and then checks to make sure the front door is locked. They have the whole top floor of the low-rise, so the door just goes out to the elevator, but Tony still can't get over actually living the vast majority of his sleeping hours _in a low-rise apartment in Queens_ , and he's not even getting laid for it. Insane.

But Tony dutifully peers at the thermostat and the security system because he's still working on talking Peter into letting him build him his own home-based system like Friday. And no, he doesn't need his reading glasses to do this as he leans against the pale, washed-out sunset-red wall of the living room, shut up. He's not squinting, _shut up._

The wall color, by the by, is called 'Soul Stone' and they'd had a fight over it that might've devolved into a screaming match if Peter hadn't been the adult in the room and peaced out to the other side of the hardware store long enough for Tony to relax about it.

Still, Tony shivers and hurries up going to check Morgan's room, done up in _Padawan Princess_ peach, that third bedroom which was the main reason Peter needed to move out of the other place to begin with. She's not here tonight, but she has a tendency to leave her window cracked. Tony closes and locks it.

The lab (humble as it is despite the color scheme being a burnt orangey-red called _Bitchin'_ ) is fine, too. Tony makes sure the samples Peter's been sequencing are still chugging along, then locks up. Finally, he joins Peter in the bathroom (a nice brick shade: _Good Intentions_ ).

"Almost done?" he asks, poking his head in. Steam envelopes him.

"Yeah, was just rinsing off the alcohol smell so it doesn't bother you. Be a few minutes yet."

"Okie doke," he calls back, and leaves Peter to it.

Entering the bedroom, Tony busies himself changing the sheets to Peter's favorite ones. He lights a few unscented candles because he's a fucking sap and he likes the way the light reflects off the walls; they're a deep wine red called, simply, _I Love You Too._

Peter, in his robe, catches him that way, standing there contemplating their interior design choices like they hold the keys to the universe. He eyes Tony with only understanding in his expression, regardless of what he actually says. Which is: "I still think we should have gone with _'Vision'_ for in here."

"I dunno, guy. I'm just a random kidnapper who was gonna snatch you outta the shower," Tony deadpans in a terrible, overstated Brooklyn accent he sometimes uses to bug Barnes when Wilson brings him ‘round. "Especially since you're cute, babydoll, I'll keep ya around."

"I never should have told you about that fantasy."

"Correct," Tony confirms, wrapping Peter up in his arms. "It's the comedic ammo that keeps on giving. But also, we can do that, if you really want to. Maybe just not for the first time."

There's a beat before it lands, and then Peter is wrenching back to look at Tony's face, and the candles, and the freshly-made bed. "Oh my god."

"It's good that you can say that. You're gonna be saying that a lot tonight," Tony quips, though he lets his voice go warmer and rougher and more darkly promising to cover for his own nerves.

"Oh my god," Peter repeats.

"Attaboy."

"Tony… Tonight? Really? Happy Birthday to me. You should have _told_ me; I still have hair in places-"

He frowns. "I should certainly hope so-"

But Peter is already shutting himself up, hands over his own mouth, so Tony lets it go. "Why tonight, though?" Peter manages to get out, uncovering his mouth as Tony walks his young lover back towards their bed.

"Like you said, baby," he half-explains, drawing Peter into a deep, mind-melting series of kisses that stretches the moment out into something warm, something luxurious. It's enough to not spook Peter as Tony gets him to kneel on the bed, and it starts just the beginnings of heat between them, low and slow. Only then, when Tony separates their mouths with his thumb in the center of Peter's bottom lip, pushing Peter back, does he finish his thought. "Happy Birthday to you."

Peter peers at him like he can't believe his own luck. Like he doesn't deserve Tony, even, and they can't have that. 

"This is all for you, honey," Tony reassures him. "Anything you want."

Peter blinks and nods and then they're kissing again.

A sound that Tony wouldn't _necessarily_ call a moan (but near enough) snatches itself out of Peter's throat when Tony starts moving his kiss-focused efforts away from Peter's mouth and up and down his jaw and neck instead. They've done this much before, but Peter's reaction is stronger this time. "Fuck," he says, with feeling.

Tony very heroically doesn't laugh at him, not even when Peter tips his head so far back in bliss that Tony ends up having to help ease Peter into a laying-down position before he Tower-of-Pisas his way into falling. It's a blessing Peter is so flexible and his knees don't protest at being swept out from under him.

However, given the chance to breathe, Peter returns to his previous line of questioning. "Okay, but why _this_ birthday?"

Tony lays down too, drawn inexorably toward Peter for another slow, plush kiss. This time Peter's tongue just barely dares to draw lines at the connection of their lips. He seems a little shier than normal… but it's still enough to light Tony up, electric, and he pours himself half-over Peter to press against him more firmly with a groan. He definitely owes Michelle Jones a fruit basket or to pay off her student loans or something.

Peter has to poke him in the shoulder to ever-so-slightly dispel the haze of desire that is settling over Tony. "Hey, I asked you a question, old man."

"Math," Tony mumbles before he gives Peter one more little smooch and starts playing with the tie of Peter's bathrobe. "Twenty-three minus the five I skipped makes eighteen."

Peter leans up on his hand to just look at Tony for a long time. 

Tony blinks up at him, and wonders what he's thinking, idly. His nerves from earlier are gone, just _gone_ and replaced with certainty. It's been a lot like becoming Iron Man, actually, becoming the man who would be Peter Parker's lover, and he finally knows what it is he has to do.

(What he _wants_ to do.)

"It was that important to you?" Peter finally asks him. "The age thing?"

"Yeah. No shortcuts in life, kid."

Peter appears to accept that with grace, dropping a kiss onto Tony's mouth and untying his robe in one motion, then shrugging it off. "Okay," he says even as Tony's occupied with steeling himself against the stunning sight of Peter. He's just miles of strength, of youthful muscle and soft skin. "But I have some demands."

“Oh?”

“If I’m your favorite young adult, then… uh… why don’t I show you just how young, and favored, and adult I can be?”

“Smooth,” Tony tells Peter, teasing, but his cock is definitely interested and his heart is overfull. “You got a deal. It’s your show now, sweetheart.”

Peter gives him a wicked grin. “Then I’m gonna blow you like I’m apologizing for getting a ferry split in two, and you… you’re gonna fuck me like you’re hammering it back together, old man. Sound good?”

But Peter covers Tony’s mouth with his own before Tony can get a word out, so he just has to think his response instead, sending it out into the universe that has seen fit to reunite them, like a prayer.

_Sounds great._

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, I am still actively working on all my other works, no worries! I hope you enjoyed this. :D


End file.
